6H:This is a poem I wrote that was submitted for my hgih school's literary magazine. It got in (yay!) and was well liked by the class, so I decided to share it with the world. The Red Witch in this poem is not in any way related to Red Witch Testament.

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Red Witch and Mr. Mudly’s Dictionary of 400 Commonly Misused Words

She had arrived at the skeleton crossing
Keeping her lantern aloft
Looking at that house that hung off the edge of the world.
A Victorian mansion
With a body in the attic, and a reaper underground
Medusa’s hair as a lawn
And Hands for a gate

Crossing the Styx tracks
Going slowly up the path,
She had been putting this off for a good reason
And grimaced as she knocked on the door.
It burned away with a creak of hinges
Letting her into Mr. Mudly’s house

He was waiting at the top of the stairs
Looking like a stick stirred in wine
And when he did descend towards her
His spidery legs bent awkwardly.
“Hello, my dear. It’s been too long.
Three hundred years at least
Well, come in, put down your load.
Hello my dear, it’s been too long.”

He led her past his trinkets:
A utopia in an hourglass
The dream he caught in a box
A Painter, cursed to paint forever
Even though all that remained was his hand
A dead doll that looked perfectly human
Mirrors that went to other worlds
He led her past them, to the dinning room

She had dreaded this trip, she recalled
Sitting before a gray feast
No better than eating dead rocks
His dead maid poured her the elixir of life.
Gratefully, she refused the drink
“Well my dear, did you know?” Mr. Mudly asked his guest
“That people confuse effect and affect
Overuse ‘basically’ all the time,
And switch the three “there’s” as well?”

Oh, how she regretted this trip
But she must approach this house
“Mr. Mudly,” The Red Witch dared, “It is time,
You’ve been running long enough.”
He tilted a shrubbery eyebrow, and then showed prison-bar teeth
“My dear, you are mistaken,” he replied
“There is no time, to me.”
She lifted her lantern, and spoke again
“When I open the lantern door,
Your soul will join the others, and light my guiding flame
It’s your time; the clock is yanking on my chest
Give up the ghost-your life is now mine.”

He leaned back in his throne, his spindly knees,
Nearly reaching to his plywood chin
“Did you know, my dear Red Witch
That people spell ‘a lot’ as one instead of two?”
She sighed and clicked the latch
The fire burst out and engulfed the house.

She looked back at the pile of dust
That remained at the edge of the world
Representing the destruction of all the wonderful things
And her lantern, held aloft, gave a firefly glow
On the skeleton crossing